You’d be unsurprised to learn that I think about death a great deal. I get to accompany so many as they approach it and afterwards, I witness families as they grieve. There is no doubt that talking about and preparing for death is a good thing, if it’s manageable and available. Knowing what you might wish for in the end days is helpful not only for yourself but also for others. I read Dr Katherine Mannix’s extraordinary book, With the End in Mind; How to Live and Die Well (whilst on honeymoon – occupational hazard!). In it, she talks of ways of dying and the energy and thought we give to it to prepare ourselves, not only in a lachrymose way but in a positive and sanguine manner as well.
So it’s interesting that this last portion of the Book of Genesis, Vayechi, as we inch our way into the new Gregorian year, speaks of death and endings, both Jacob’s and Joseph’s. We encounter Jacob speaking plainly and candidly to his children:
“I am about to die” (Gen. 48:21) . . . “I am about to be gathered to my kin” (49:29).
And he tells them what he hopes for, then Joseph does the same to his brothers. They both want to ‘go home.’ They want their bodies, and bones in the case of Joseph, to be laid to rest back home. The pull for the familiar and where they came from is so compelling, so they exact promises from the brothers that they’ll go home.
Both scenes illustrate the writer William Faulkner’s truism from his 1951 play Requiem for a Nun that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
We carry it all around with us. I like thinking that more than just our life should inform our death but equally, the other way around. Our death and what matters should inform our life and the way we live. This feels apposite for these early days of 2026. Join us for what is likely to be a an intimate first Shabbat of the year at FPS.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
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